User reviews

Parents say

Kids say

What's it about?

HUNGRY RED PLANET is an innovative computer simulation produced by Health Media Lab under a grant from the National Institutes for Health. The game sends children on a space mission to colonize Mars. Their goal is to colonize Mars by establishing healthy, food-producing settlements. To keep the settlers healthy, and thus able to work at their potential, the players must provide healthy menus for the settlements.

To succeed, kids will learn how to interpret FDA Nutrition Facts labels found on the 300 real foods available for menu planning, and to conform their menus to the Department of Agriculture's Food Guide Pyramid and Healthy Eating Index. Players must also plan food production and allocate resources to expand their settlements. Kids will wrestle with food shortages, viruses, and unusual occurrences. If they keep the settlers healthy and produce enough food, they win.

Is it any good?

QUALITY

If you have children who think soda is a healthy breakfast, give them this game and you may find them reaching for the orange juice instead. This clearly educational simulation impressed our kid-testers because it was so much fun. They confessed to learning a tremendous amount about nutrition. Featuring excellent tutorials and a Nutrition Reference, Hungry Red Planet is terrific software for the home as well as for schools.

Families can talk about...

Families can talk about their own diets. Do you eat healthfully? How could you improve your diet? What role does the media play in teaching both good habits and influencing the things that we want to eat?

About these links

About Our Rating System

The age displayed for each title is the minimum one for which it's developmentally appropriate. We recently updated all of our reviews to show only this age, rather than the multi-color "slider." Get more information about our ratings.

hungry red planet

Families can talk about their own diets. Do you eat healthfully? How could you improve your diet? What role does the media play in teaching both good habits and influencing the things that we want to eat?

Get top media picks for your kid's age

Each week we send a customized newsletter to our parent and teen subscribers. Parents can customize their settings to receive recommendations and parent tips based on their kids' ages. Teens receive a version just for them with the latest reviews and top picks for movies, video games, apps, music, books, and more.

Our Policies

Download our free app

Common Sense is the nation’s leading independent non-profit organization dedicated to empowering kids to thrive in a world of media and technology. Families, educators, and policymakers turn to
Common Sense for unbiased information and trusted advice to help them learn how to harness the positive power of media and technology for all kids.

Common Sense, and Common Sense Media are registered trademarks, and Common Sense Education, Common Sense Kids Action, and other associated names and logos are trademarks of Common Sense Media, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (FEIN 41-2024986).